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Britain Deploys GPS Backup

posted by n1 on Tuesday November 04 2014, @10:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the eloran-in-my-delorean dept.
News

tonyPick writes:

Over at the BBC is a report that the eLoran system has been installed at 7 ports in Britain.

The General Lighthouse Authorities have finished installing eLoran in seven ports along the east coast of Britain, completing the first phase of their roll out. It is now in place in Dover, Sheerness, Harwich and Felixstowe, Middleborough, Leith, Humber and Aberdeen.

[...] For now, eLoran is being tested for shipping, but it could also play a role on land for the vast array of systems that use GPS.

eLoran is a ground based system which uses 100kHz pulses and can operate as a complementary system to GPS for critical navigation systems in maritime applications in case of accidental failures or deliberate interference.

Also covered at phys.org and Digital Ship.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @10:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @10:43PM (#113080)

    Make sure to backup your backup backups!

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday November 05 2014, @12:45AM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday November 05 2014, @12:45AM (#113104)

      Sure, but do I have to buy an EU-made phone to get an eLoran receiver to backup my GPS chip?

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 05 2014, @12:18PM

        by VLM (445) on Wednesday November 05 2014, @12:18PM (#113212)

        Given typical loran range you'd need to be in the EU to use it, so probably not much of a problem, just transfer the SIM.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by mendax on Tuesday November 04 2014, @11:12PM

    by mendax (2840) on Tuesday November 04 2014, @11:12PM (#113085)

    It's interesting that the article, published on a British web site, failed to mention the British development of Gee [wikipedia.org]during the Second World War, a system which was used to guide British and American bombers accurately to their targets. It operated on a similar principle as Loran but I think used higher frequency signals.

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.

    • (Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday November 04 2014, @11:15PM

      by mendax (2840) on Tuesday November 04 2014, @11:15PM (#113086)

      Uhh.... I meant to say lower frequencies.

      --
      It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @07:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @07:07AM (#113166)

      Nor did they mention The Omega Navigation System (1969) [youtube.com] ..

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @03:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @03:12PM (#113256)

      QCOM had a similar system developed for their trucking system. It used cell towers which are very well known fixed locations and beacon at regular known intervals.

      • (Score: 2) by hubie on Wednesday November 05 2014, @05:57PM

        by hubie (1068) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 05 2014, @05:57PM (#113313) Journal

        A friend of mine worked on that. It wasn't until after he told me about it that I started noticing those white discs sitting on the top of Schneider trucks tucked behind their wind screens. He told me the truckers loved the system.

  • (Score: 1) by J053 on Wednesday November 05 2014, @07:46PM

    by J053 (3532) <{dakine} {at} {shangri-la.cx}> on Wednesday November 05 2014, @07:46PM (#113337) Homepage
    I worked on LORAN-C systems for the US Coast Guard back in the late '70s. The accuracy of these things was IIRCC on the order of a few hundred meters, but the range (using 100kHz) was incredible. I worked at the LORSTA Marcus Island on a 3MW(!) transmitter, and that particular LORAN-C star covered everything from Yap to northern Japan.